As it happens!

I am loving this blog app. I can stop for 5 minutes, write something and then carry on. This is practically live blogging!

If you have yet to try the Festool domino joiner I am going to suggest that you do. Thanks Byron for lending me yours. I might just have to put that in the ol' Christmas list and hope santa's had a good year!

Anyways, as I had previously mentioned, my apron to leg joints are a live/ floating tenon combo. The domino is literally as easy to use as a biscuit joiner except it gives you the strength of a tenon. A bit more exactness is required in laying out as you don't get any forgiveness like you do with biscuits. Your tenons have to be lined up perfectly as they fit totally snugly in the mortise. Essentially you line up the line on the joiner with your pencil line and plunge. Really awesome!











I was a bit nervous at first but it does almost seem idiot proof.



Once again the 8' pipe clamps my brother gave me one year have come in handy. I laughed at the time, wondering when I would ever use such big clamps but I laugh no more.

I'll post a photo of the joinery soon but I forgot to take one before I clamped it all together. Damn this live blogging...

Live tenons are a nice change of pace

After a week of hectic action at work, this day in the shop was just what the doctor ordered.




Cutting the shoulders on the table saw is easy if your saw is cutting perfectly square. The tape was a tip from IP wherein your short shoulders are left a hair proud. This is swiftly removed by a razor sharp plane blade in the fitting process. Perfect shoulders every time...







These are the aprons, both long and short. The tenons on the long are a touch shorter do a simple shim avoids the need to change your setup.  Sometimes souvenirs are the perfect thickness. Thanks Don!







Fitting the cheeks in the shaper is super accurate and you can run all of your pieces quickly once you've nailed the setup. I like using a 90' sled to hold the piece while the shaper fence acts as a depth stop.



Almost ready for fitting. First I like to round over the first half or so of the tenon with an appropriate sized round-over bit.
In this case it was 3/16" (half of the 3/8" tenon thickness) This serves 2 purposes: First, waste removal, but more importantly, it leaves a great indicator for the radius of your tenon.



Back to the bench with a few simple tools and soon a perfect fit is achieved. Patience is a virtue as it's easy to blow by your perfect fit if you start getting too aggressive with your files.



Seeing parts go together is the payoff.

More fitting to do and then on to the dominizer...

Beginnings of joinery

I've begun the mortise and tenon joinery for the aprons into the legs. Each joint is going to be made up of a combination live tenon and two floating tenons. This will make for a very strong joint but also allows me to use techniques that I've not used in quite a while. The live tenons will be a good review while the loose will actually be done using a festool domino. Below are the mortises for the big live tenons. These were done on the minimax mortiser table.






Setup for these was dead simple and the repetition allows for very accurate and quick results.

Next up, cutting live tenons! Sweet!